“I don’t usually bother going into the Towers to visit the girls. Day to day maintenance isn’t my style. It’s not exactly my area. I don’t mix business and pleasure unless I’ve got a very good reason to do so.”
He moves his hand away and I want to scream.
“Are all the girls who work here staying at the Towers?” Meaning, is Rita at the Towers now?
“Most, not all. Some live with their families. Not a lot, as you can imagine . . .”
“Do any—you know—go away with the patrons?” Is that where Rita went? Is that why I haven’t heard from her since that last message?
“So many questions, Miss Atussi.” He pulls away completely. My flesh is on fire. “Are you planning on going away already—when just a second ago you said you didn’t want to go away with any of us?”
“No—no.” I clarify quickly. “Why would I?”
He leans in and kisses me again. I don’t know what game he’s playing, but whatever it is, he’s got the upper hand. I bristle at how easy it is for him. “Picture me as your patron. Your lover. Taking pleasure in giving your pleasure. Taking pleasure in tasting you.” His kiss is so deep I can barely breathe.
I close my eyes. Despite myself, I let him part my lips. I let him put his hand back between my legs.
“People always think this business is about women giving men pleasure. But not me. What can I say. I guess I’m a feminist.” I want to smack that grin off his face. Right after he finishes fingering me. “I think women should enjoy themselves just as much. Maybe more.”
“I have no problem enjoying myself.” I snap back into sense. “Responsibly.”
“Everyone here is safe, if that’s what you’re worried about. Members have to get an STD test before they get their card, regular check-ups thereafter. The girls, too.”
He moves his lips down to my breasts. I inhale sharply as he takes one of my nipples in his mouth. “Does this feel dangerous to you?”
I can only sigh in response.
“I knew it.” He smiles wickedly and I can’t stand it; I let it happen anyway. “I knew it. I knew there was a bad girl in there somewhere. I saw it on stage. I saw the real you. Everyone saw her. And many people—they want to see her again. In a private room. Alone.”
He moves his mouth to my other breast.
“You are intoxicating, Miss Atussi. So pure—yet there’s a fire in you. I’m sure enough of that. Maybe you’ll even make me break my personal rule. If you want me to. I’ll show you how to unleash that fire. I’ll make you crave pleasure. I’ll make you need it. Wouldn’t you like that/ Wouldn’t you like everything I could give you?”
I can’t tell if he’s playing me or I’m playing him.
What he’s offering me is access, plain and simple. Access to him. And with it, maybe, the Blue Room’s secrets.
“Yes,” I said. I don’t know if I mean it.
“Then move into the Towers, Staci.”
I want to moan again.
“It’s time to live.”
I nod. Slowly.
Even now, I don’t know which of us is winning.
Chapter 5
My ears are ringing. The orgasm I’ve experienced is so violent, so earth-shaking, that the sky goes black and white above my eyes. I can’t see a thing. I’m shaking, all over. My body is trembling like a twig in the depths of a thunderstorm. My skin is so sensitive; I can feel every inch of the satin sheets against my spine.
I look around me in shock. For a second, my hands clutch around empty air. My fingers trace nothingness.
Then . . .
Who was it that held me? Who was it that wrapped his legs around my waist, that thrust inside me, that let his chest clench against my chest, that let me feel his smooth skin, his taut muscles, his rippling strength?
I’m breathing shallow, hard, so loud I’m afraid I’ll wake up the person in the room next to me. I’m breathing so hard I can’t breathe.
It was only a dream, Staci. I feel stupid, saying it out loud. But I have to, to reassure myself, to stop my heart from beating as fast as a hummingbird’s. Whatever I felt, whatever pleasure I succumbed to in the night—it wasn’t real. That face, those glittering blue eyes with that wicked smirk in them—I hadn’t succumbed, not really. I hadn’t done anything at all except dare to dream of Terrence Blue, the most dangerous man in Los Angeles. And the most sensuous.
He’d kissed me on the cheek when he brought me up to the hotel. “Room 342,” he’d said with a grin. “I’ll be sure to remember that.” But he hadn’t tried to come inside. He’d been a perfect gentleman.
“Tomorrow’s Monday,” he had said before I went in. “It’s your day off. You should do something special with it.”
“I don’t want to do anything,” I’d said.
“Suit yourself. But I want you to know—you have the option.”
I’d spent a few hours just walking around the room, in shock. The Blue Tower was everything they’d said it was and more. I’d never even dreamed of luxury like this. Satin sheets, four-poster beds, a balcony with a view over Los Angeles, twenty-four inch plasma television screens, a minibar stocked with the finest liquors a girl like me could want. If my mother could see me here, I thought—with a pang—she wouldn’t believe her eyes.
If my mother could see me here.
The thought filled me with shame. Me, here, in a hotel room that probably cost as much per night as a whole course of chemotherapy. I had a wild urge to steal something, anything—the art on the walls, the beautiful mahogany carvings on the mantlepiece—to pawn it that very night and run to my mother with the cash in hand and tell her to make one last attempt, one last-ditch try, to get out of that hospice. To survive.
Stupid girl, I’d chided myself then. Believing in last-minute miracles. Believing that any good could come out of a place like this.
I was here for one reason and one reason only. To find out what happened to Rita. To expose this place as the evil it was.
I walked through the room, letting my fingertips trace the satin on the bed. I took a bath in the Jacuzzi and tried to watch the sweat, the sickness, the shame off my skin. But they’d got it sticking to me good. Even after an hour in the tub, scrubbing myself fervently, I couldn’t stop smelling Terrence Blue on my skin.
And now I’d dreamed about him.
A knock comes at my door. Breakfast—this early? On my day off? I groan as I pull on a lilac silk dressing gown and go to the door.
“Good morning, miss. Courtesies of Terrence Blue,” the maid holds out a silver platter. “He says to spend your day off wisely.” She looks up at me. “A car’s waiting downstairs to take you to the airport.”
I look down in shock at the platter. There it is, a first class ticket to Los Vegas.
My mouth drops open.
Does he know?
No, he can’t know. He thinks I’m like the other girls, that I want to go squander all my winnings in the slot machines, that I want to get drunk and party. Maybe he thinks a weekend in Vegas among all those high rollers will loosen me up, make me more willing to. .
I shake my head.
He has no idea that what I want most in Vegas can’t be found coming out of any slot machine.
Before lunchtime, I’m taking a taxi up to the Sweet Ranch Hospice. I’ve taken off all my makeup, worn my most girlish dress.
I’m here to see my mother.
Her face lights up when she sees me. Even under the sickness, there’s a woman there, a woman capable of such incredible joy when she’s near the people she loves. Not even cancer can ravage that smile, that smile of pure love. Of real love—true love—not the sordid fake affection you buy and sell at the Blue Room. Seeing her, in this simple place—the only hospice we can afford for her—makes me feel ashamed at the luxury I’ve left behind.
“Honey!” Her voice is still strong. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you too, Mom.”
I wish I could be with her all the time
. I wish I didn’t have to leave.
“How’s your new job?”
I flush. “It’s good, I guess. They pay me pretty well.” I feel a sudden burst of pride when I’m able to leave a stack of bills on her table. “I want you to order anything you want, ok? Order delivery from the finest restaurant in town. All the dessert you want.”
“The good life, huh?” Her laugh is a croak, and brings tears to my eyes. “Careful, Staci, you know I can’t have too much fat. I might get a heart attack.”
The humor is black, but it binds us together.
“You found an apartment yet?”
“Actually—the club puts the girls up. In a hotel they own.”
My mother’’s brow furrows. “That’s pretty unusual, honey.”
“It’s normal for them. It’s how they keep an eye on us—make sure we’re working out, practicing, eating all our vegetables.”
“They’re not . . .” she sighs. “They’re not making you do anything you want to do, are they?”
“No, Mommy,” I place my hand against her cheek. “Don’t worry. I’m totally in control.” Involuntarily, I summon Terrence to mind again. I shiver at the thought of him.
“You be careful, hear?” She pulls me closer. “These places, some of them. They exist to make money off the backs of beautiful, naïve girls like you.”
“I’m not naïve.”
“You know that world—it isn’t all glitz and glamour.”
“I know, Mom.” I’ve known that since before I was born.
“Any boys out there—to keep you on the straight and narrow?”
“One . . .” I answer in spite of myself. “But I don’t think straight and narrow is exactly his scene.”
She looks worried again. “I don’t like the sound of him.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, patting her hand. “I have my head screwed on straight.”
“There are mistakes I don’t want you making.”
“Don’t worry, Mom. You raised a responsible girl.” I try not to let the tears fall. “One who knows how to be careful.”
Now my mother is smiling again. She’s positively beaming.
“I know, Staci. When I see you coming in here, looking the way you look—you’re so beautiful. Not just outside, but inside. You’re radiant. Healthy. Happy. I’m so proud of the way you’ve grown up. I know it hasn’t always been easy for us, but you’ve never let the challenges you faced set you back. You know they’ll only ever help you get stronger. You’ve seen so much, done so much. And I believe you could have the life I. . . .”
I never got to have.
But she won’t say that. Not for a second. She won’t ever admit that having me ruined her life, ruined her dreams.
“The truth is, though,” my mom smiles. “Despite everything. Despite the hardship, the difficulties, the motels . . . I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
“That’s crazy.” Of course she would have. She could have been a star, a diva, a millionaire. She could have had it all, made it big. Instead she made that one huge mistake.
“Having you . . .” She beams up at me. “That was my dream. That was worth it. And I wouldn’t trade you for all the stardom, all the fame and fortune, all the success in the world. I got my dream coming true. Every time I look at you, I’m reminded of that. But I want you to have it easier than I did, Staci. I want you to have everything. Love and success. A family and a career. And I worry that Hollywood, LA, that world—it’s not the place to get that everything.”
Maybe she’d rather me to go to law school, business school, med school. Something safe. Something that would put me on the track to success.
But I’ve always known that I have to sing. I’ve always known that my future, my fate, is onstage. It’s in the Atussi blood.
“Promise me something,” she whispers, and I know whatever it is, whatever she wants, I’ll make that promise to her.
“Of course, Mom. Anything.”
“If you find a man—make sure he’s a good man. Don’t settle for anything less. He can be poor, he can be shy, he can have too-big ears or be a little bit awkward at remembering your anniversary. But make sure he’s a good man. One who treats you right. And if you can’t find one that you like, promise me, honey, you’ll take up with no man at all. Never take up with a man who isn’t good—you promise me that?”
I think of Terrence, again, and I’m almost ashamed of how far I almost let things go, how stupid I almost let him make me be. I think of him, and once more my thighs clench together involuntarily in memory of the pleasure he gave me. I remember screaming his name in my dreams and I blush.
But I say nothing. I take my mother into my arms and kiss her, hold her, make her the promise that I’m also making to myself.
“I promise, Mom.”
I mean it.
Chapter 6
I don’t have too long to stay at my mother’s side. My return ticket was for 5:30, and I know I have to get a good night’s sleep at the Blue Tower if I want to do a halfway decent job at the club tomorrow. Not that I’m sure whether or not I want to. Doing a good job means that a lot of men will be clamoring to spend the night with me—and I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet.
Could I do it? If I had to. If it was the only way I could keep my cover. My virginity was just a concept, after all—sex was just an act, wasn’t it? And Rita—I had to find out what happened to her. If she was even still alive. If she needed my help. If Rita was in danger somewhere, I’d have to do whatever it took to get her out safely. And if that meant making men like Angus happy, I guess that’s what I’d have to do.
The idea still fills me with revulsion—and anger. What is it about a woman’s body that made the most powerful men—because the powerful were always men, aren’t they?—lose all control like that? What is it about this skin, these bones, this collection of flesh that I live and breathe in, this part of myself, that men thinks belongs to them, just because they want to do things to it? Don’t I have more to offer them than my pound of flesh?
I want to be sick. I don’t doubt what Terrence says—that the Blue Room is one of the most powerful places in the world. It’s where deals are made and broken—over bodies like mine. Over the backs of women like me. I retch the whole plane ride home, thinking about it.
No, I decide. If I’m going to have sex, it’s going to be for me, because I want to, because I love and trust someone. Not because some rich guy with a hard-on thinks I owe him one just for existing while male. My mother is right. I’m better off with no man at all than with a man who treats me like a piece of meat.
But could I pretend? Just for a little while? Just if it meant getting Rita home safely?
I try not to think about it. I tell myself I don’t have to decide just now. That I’ll be able to hold the wolves from the door just a little longer.
By the time I get back to the Blue Tower, I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally. My day off hasn’t exactly been a vacation. I make my way to the service entrance, and am surprised to find the maid I knew that morning looking at me in shock.
“What are you doing here, miss?”
“Going . . . home?” I venture.
“Miss, the Blue Room girls take the guest entrance—like everyone else.”
“But we’re . . . service, aren’t we?” I mean, we get the luxury, the amenities, the perks—but we’re just working girls, after all.
“Terrence is insistent. All our girls live like guests, here.”
The public entrance. The shiny new lobby. Terrence wants us all out in public. Pretending to be famous actresses, movie stars, society ladies. Pretending like we’re not glorified prostitutes. But that’s all LA is, isn’t it? Pretend.
So I strut into the front lobby, my head held high, and pretend like I own the place.
All the while, I wonder. Do they know? The other people here—the businessmen drinking in the lobby, the matrons with their tiny Maltese dogs sitting and waiting to check in—do the
y know who I really am? What I really do? How much I don’t belong here with them?
When I get to my room, I’m surprised to find that someone’s been in. There’s a whole bunch of files that weren’t here before, all in beautifully monogrammed stationary. “Breakfast. Manners. Exercise. Language Skills. Facial. Waxing. Sauna.”
Apparently, they want me to learn conversational Mandarin and Arabic, fluent French, art history, and the political history of the Balkans. It’s a better education than I ever got at Briar Valley Community College, that’s for sure.
I’m almost excited.
The menus, though, make my heart sink. Prescribed diets—all carrot sticks and celery—with precise times to eat and drink every day of the week. Eyebrow tweezing is scheduled, as are scrubs, waxing, and something unappetizingly referred to as a “mud rub.”
This isn’t going to be easy.
On the top of the files is a handwritten note, in a style so elegant it looks like calligraphy.
See me at once. 2nd Floor, Room 202.
Josephine Walters (Mrs.).
I begin to wonder about Josephine Walters (Mrs.). At once, I form a mental image of her: something like the formidable madam from Gone With the Wind and the stern matron of a girls’ boarding school. I immediately know she’s behind all of this—from the Mandarin to the tweezing. And, all of a sudden, I’m terrified.
It’s with great trepidation that I force my way down the hallway and into the elevator. Whoever this Josephine Walters (Mrs.) is, I have a feeling she isn’t going to like me. Mandarin and Arabic, let alone a 24/7 beauty routine, aren’t exactly my forte. I didn’t exactly grow up going to finishing school. Sure, I’d have loved to learn the socio-political history of the Balkans, but I was a bit too busy flipping burgers to pay for our by-the-night motels to do more than scrawl out the answers to my school assignments.
I’m not, in other words, high-class courtesan material.
But the woman I see sitting behind the desk in the sparsely decorated, briskly efficient office in room 202 hardly looks like a high-class courtesan or a frightening matriarch. Small, wiry, with black hair pinned in a prim bun and square-rimmed black glasses sitting neatly on her pert little nose, Josephine Walter (Mrs.) looks like a businesswoman, not a madam.
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